


Caved In

by UngreatfulExpectations



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bucky Barnes Recovering, F/M, Human Experimentation, Hydra, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Mutant Powers, Near Death Experiences, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-HYDRA Reveal, Protective Bucky Barnes, Sarcastic Bucky Barnes, Self-Discovery, Swearing, Weapon X Project
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:41:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24311461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UngreatfulExpectations/pseuds/UngreatfulExpectations
Summary: “They sound like a delight.”She almost drops the chip she’s about to bring to her mouth.“Was that sarcasm?” He flashes her an annoyed look.“I’m capable of it, yes.” He bites back.“Is there a reason the last three days have been silent? I’m bored out of my god-damned mind!” She turns and faces him, back against the door and she crosses her arms over her chest.“Sorry sweetheart, if I’d known you required constant attention--”
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Original Female Character(s), James "Bucky" Barnes/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 26





	1. Part One: Escape

**Author's Note:**

> If I've missed a tag at any point, please let me know.
> 
> This story will include references to past abuse, torture, and experimentation. It takes place approximately a year after the Attack on New York and a Year before CA: The Winter Soldier. 
> 
> Mutants are in hiding, and the general public bury their heads in the ground about it. It will be discussed in later chapters. 
> 
> There is some Russian in this chapter, the translations for everything but the trigger words are in the notes.

Caved In  
Part One: Escape

Her feet are cold.

Arching her neck down her vision whites out for a moment. Her neck feels cold and wet and from the metal smell of blood that fills her nose leaves her nauseous. Stomach rolling she lets her eyes fall closed again in terror. Lips trembling she lets out a pained whine.

Cacey doesn’t remember when she got on the table. But she does remember being in the hallway when the Russian asshole with the Hydra (which--didn’t that get stamped out in the second World War?) garb and sickeningly cruel smile.

The second he had put his hands on her she didn’t have to be an empath to know this man was all sorts of fucked up. But--what was she sensing now?

“What did you do to the girl, Viktor?” A heavily Russian voice calls out. Oh god, was she in Russia? One Russian guard was one thing, but listening to the scientists surrounding them she could hear other Russian voices.

“She was slow,” a similarly accented voice calls back. “I wanted to show her a lesson.” What a peach, you motherfucking dick-wad.

“And managed to make our jobs significantly more difficult. We need her awake for the sessions.” Great. Got out of Weapon X to be handed to these freaks. Who had she pissed off in a past life? How majorly had she fucked up to finally escape Stryker to be handed to these fucking European Dr. Evil like Quacks. 

She lets her eyes flutter open and she sees colors--dark, cruel reds and blacks.

She closes her eyes again. She must be pretty out of it if she can aura colors--she’d trained out of that years ago. It was one of the first things the Professor had taught her. Hallucinations weren’t exactly keen for keeping a low profile. Struggling to see around and through colors caused more problems.

Cold tingles fill her feet and fingers and for a moment she feels genuine hope. Reaching out mentally she can feel the wisps of rage, lust, and cruelty. There are stabs of savageness and distressing auras.

When the man slammed her back against the wall--maybe he broke it. 

Letting her fingers twitch, she counts the members in the room.

Confident, cruel.

Savage, blood-thirsty, and lusting.

Bitter and angry.

There are quite a few terror filled scientists, from the far distance, curious and anxious.

But the last one makes her pause.

It feels like a fractured puzzle. The aura itself is cold and vicious, layered with rage and hurt and brutality, wrapped around fear, damaged, and twisted hopelessness.

“Dr. can you wake her?” One of them asks.

“She is awake in essence--”

“That is not what I want!” Someone slams something down but the rage isn’t what startles her. “Wonderful work Viktor--this is why I keep you on such short leash, you are incapable of any task of importance!”

It’s the hopelessness that lashes out. It’s like a drop in water rippling across the two other auras. It’s like its clawing out trying to act. She can feel the desperation.

It feels like some of the other mutants Weapon X ‘repurposed’ for Hunting. Brainwashed, maybe.

She struggles to keep her breathing slow and even, manipulating her own heartbeat the way Dom taught her. The more she hid and created distractions around her the better chance she had of getting away. The more time she bid the more power she could build up. She hasn’t had the collar off these off in a long time, at least not without Pulse around. And she has no idea what she’s capable anymore.

Letting power build up beneath her fingers, she pushes at the one with rage sharply. 

Someone screams as something crashes to the ground.

“What is wrong with you Viktor?”

“Отвянь Karpov!”

She pushes again and then takes a deep breath as the table she’s on is shoved to the side. Resisting the urge to open her eyes, she pushes again and hears a bloody scream. She holds in the pain, the rage, and lets it build around her like a storm.

“Asset,” Karpov hollars out, “take care of this!”

She feels him move but does not hear him, but she reaches beneath the surface and yanks.

The surface trembles and she has to pull again, clenching her teeth.

“Чем вы занимаетесь?” Karpov yells.

“Это девушка!” A feminine voice calls out.

Terror fills her belly, because she knows enough of Russian from Piotr that they just realized it’s her doing it. She snaps her eyes open and looks over, and the asset looks at her, rage welling in his face. In panic, she rips her arm out of the strap an opens a palm at him, screaming.

It’s like a wave that is released from her hand and the entire room stumbles back.

Her head feels like it’s pulsing, and it isn’t little veins that turn black an dilate now. Her entire arm is filled with thick black veins, all the way down to her elbow.

The asset falls to his knees, head falling back and he screams.

In shock, she turns her palm and looks at her hands. The entire room fills suddenly with colors and she has to blink away the fear.

“Что ты с ней сделал?” Karpov asks. For a moment, she tries to think back to the lessons with Piotr. But her head is aching and her ears are ringing. “Солдат?” 

_Soldier? Is that what you call him?_

Pulling in a deep breath, she lets out a scream and pulls again. Wrapping herself tight against the prison wrapped around the man she pulls and pulls, feeling as the walls of the mental prison begin to crack and break. She can feel as the warmth of the person he is under begins to leak out.

Out of the corner of her eyes she sees Viktor, the one who broke the dampener out of the corner of her eye move towards her with a gun.

And then his brain splatters as his head explodes. She turned to look at the Asset who heaved in effort, gun pointed at where Viktor used to be. 

The gunshots continue.

Her stomach rolls as screams fill the laboratory.

“Желание, Ржавый, Семнадцать--” Karpov is yelling frantically and she can feel instantly the assets control waning. He begins to shake and tremble, falling to his knees with a scream. But beneath she can feel even the deepest layer struggling to claw its way out. She reaches out again, teeth clenched. “Рассвет, Печь, Девять, Добросердечный--” 

_No. You can’t have him._

Roaring, the asset reached out with a strong hand and empties his clip into the man before standing up and using a metal arm to catch a soldiers fist. Blinking in surprise, someone grabs her. 

In terror, she screams. _Don’t touch me!_

The person crumbles to the ground, and she rolls off the table. Dry heaving, she hits the ground hard as colors fill her vision again. Muddy yellow is clouding her eyes and she knows its because her head literally feels like a cracked open watermelon.

_Thank you Viktor,_ she thinks sarcastically. 

Someone leaps on her, pinning her to the ground, knocking her head forwards.

She vomits bile that time.

In panic she struggles and lifts her hands to wrap around the hanging strap that held her up she pulls and the table tumbles over, knocking off the man and pinning him as she curls and rolls between the thick wooden legs as it crushes the man.

Forcing herself up, she grabs a gun left on the ground and takes out another that charges at her just as a man is thrown across the room. For a moment, her brain stops functioning for a moment.

_That was at least twenty feet!_

Forcing it away, she points and aims at every single person that aims a gun at her, him, or runs at them. Blanking her mind to it she lets Dom’s voice fill her ears. _If it comes to you or them, it has to be you. Shoot ‘em dead, shoot ‘em until you can’t feel them anymore. Deal with it after, but survive._

Dom had made it out that night because she did that. And Cacey had ended up in chains again. She’d turned back and couldn’t shoot. She’d done the exact thing that Dom told her not to do. And with her collar still on all she had was those guns.

There was no way she was ever going back into chains. Not again. There was no way she was going to be the reason someone else was back in chains again, either.

She goes through three guns before the room falls silent except for her own heavy breathing.

Blood coats the walls.

Her hands tremble.

Letting the last gun fall her head starts to ache again. 

Turning over her shoulder the asset is kneeling on the ground with his head in his hands. 

Her feet stumble to walk over to him, but a gunshot rings out.

And then she tumbles into black.

She’s warm.

She hasn’t been warm in years. Not since that last night in the shelter before the night she was taken. But even then she hadn’t felt safe, fifteen years old and curled up in a ball around a bag holding the only things in the world she had left to her. The bed hadn’t been comfortable but it was a bed.

She’s warm and comfortable here. 

Her hands trace over the soft comforter and her eyes slowly open.

She isn’t alone but there is no malice coming from the man sitting across the room. Still as a statue, the asset watches her. Her eyes strain to look at him in the dim light of the lamp lit next to him. It really only shrouds him in more darkness. For a moment, he looks like one of the cartoon evil overlords Piotr used to spend time drawing in classes.

He watches her with unflinching eyes and as her vision adjusts she notices his eyes are uniquely the prettiest shade of blue she’s ever seen on a person. As her mind clears and her powers start to reach out softly for his emotional aura. She can see that all the pulling she’d done earlier had only been repaired, though the second layer seemed to have collapsed into the first. The outer layer had healed but the inner layer was healing too. It was stronger than it was before.

Does he speak English? She doesn’t know if she could keep up with the Russian. She had a good memory for it. But most of her time had been with that basic Russian book she got for Christmas, Art Classes, and free period with Piotr. 

“Вы говорите по-англиский?” She struggles out, throat dry. He shifts in the chair and watches as she shifts up, before collapsing in pain.

“You were shot.” He says in a heavily accented Russian voice. “Left arm. Stay off it.” 

The urge to flip him off is stamped down by the pain and relief that he does know English, but she is forced to concentrate on the pain to ebb it.

“Where are we?” She asks, looking over at the night table, where a glass of water and aspirin lay. She drinks small amounts, throat painfully dry. Her head aches, her entire body aches. It’s not the one of physical pain, even though that's there. It’s the kind of pain where she overuses her abilities. 

Too much push and not enough pull.

“Belarus.” He says evenly. For a moment she has to imagine a map, nose wrinkling. “It is above Ukraine. Next to Russia.” He tells her. Taking another sip of water she nods. Okay. She knows where Russia and Ukraine are on a map. She just struggles to place Belarus. She’s never even heard of it if she’s being honest.

“Thank you.” He doesn’t speak. 

Looking next to her, there is a red book with a star on it. Frowning, she reaches over to grab it and feels her hands burn. 

Instantly she can feel his entire body tense as if to attack. She drops it both in fear of him and how it makes her feel. The cover is old red leather, frayed at the edges. 

“What…what is that?” 

“Книга.” He says, voice devoid of inflection. She really has no clue what he said, but she feels like it should be something she should know. 

“It feels…evil.” She says quietly. 

“Да.”

“What...does it do?” 

“Для актива.” 

She scowls instantly. She may not understand but she knows what he says.

“I’m not calling you that. It’s fucking stupid. And why is it over here?” She grabs it with her bad arm as she struggles out of bed. “Why didn’t you fucking burn it? Destroy it? You aren’t a weapon, you’re a human being!” She throws it against the floor, and reaches into the bedside table. There’s a bible in Russian and tissues. “Do you have matches?” 

“Чем вы занимаетесь?” 

She pauses, sighing. “Look, I can get by on Russian, but most of it is from like four or five years ago. Maybe longer. So if you know enough of English--”

“What are you doing?” He’s suddenly behind her grabbing her wrist. 

She can feel the wavering of the line between asset and whoever the fuck he is beneath it all. “We should burn it. I don’t know what they did to you--but you aren’t an asset. You aren’t an object or a tool.” 

She can see the switch in his eyes. Steel blue eyes turn warm. This close, she sees him far better than she ever has. His face is dusted with dark facial hair, there's a line down his face healing slowly before her eyes. His jaw is angled and bruised, but she’s struck suddenly.

_This is the prettiest man I’ve ever seen._

“You need to rest, your pupils are still wrong. Better than three days ago. Burn it tomorrow. We leave then. Stop using that arm.” Accent is gone, and his accent sounds suspiciously familiar.

He leads her back to the bed and steps on the book. She’s not sure he notices it. And wait--did he say three days? But he pushes gently at her until she sits down onto the bed. That’s when she notices that she’s in clean clothes, the cuts and scrapes up and down her arms from shipment have been cleaned and bandaged. Her hair is clean of blood.

_Warm. Clean. Safe._

For the first time in at least four years. Maybe five.

“You saved my life.” She says quietly. “Thank you.”

“Вы спасли нас обоих.”

She doesn’t know what he says, but she tiredness hits her like a truck. So she sleeps.

She awakes the next morning to the smell of coffee.

The room is filled with a soft light from the linen curtains and she can hear the soft sound of birds outside. Looking over her shoulder, the time reads nearly six in the morning. Groaning, she sits up gingerly, careful to not use her arm too much and looks at her new travel companion.

He is dressed in jeans, a Henley shirt a size or two too small with a baseball hat on. Leather gloves and new boots. Looking over at the clock in confusion again, she realizes belatedly he must have stolen them. His hair is tied into a small ponytail but it’s damp. On the end of the other-side of the bed he has clothes, medical supplies, knives, two guns and ammo, and other supplies lined up. 

There is a pile of folded clothes with a travel toothbrush and tooth paste next to her as well as the stupid book.

He’s folding and working meticulously at packing two backpacks and a duffel bag. For a moment she is stunned at watching him work with such precision. She’s not sure if there is an OCD complex attached to it or if it came from years of surviving.

“Keep the arm dry, but if you want to shower now is the time to do it. Leave the water as cold as you can take it.” Blinking, she frowns at the lack of accent. He just looks up at her with a frown. “If you turn the water too hot, you could pass out and I’ll have to clean up your wounds again.”

He tosses her a towel from the little end table next to the chair he had been watching her from the night before.

“I’ve never been out of the States before,” she mutters quietly. “At least I don’t think I have.”

Realization of where they are is only starting to hit her now and she’s not quite sure it really has. Cacey knows it’s stupid, but she wonders if it’ll look the same as the states. Just different lettering on the signs.

“My name is Cacey.” She says quietly. “Cacey Devine.”

That gives him pause. Looking down at the supplies, she thinks he must have stolen most of them last night. She wonders if she turns on the news if there would be any burglaries on the local channel.

“What should I call you? I’m not calling you asset. Or soldier.” 

He stares at her for a long moment, before looking down. “Yasha.” He says shortly. Somehow, she doesn’t quite believe him. He isn’t outright lying. She could feel it if he was. But still. Maybe he didn’t know what his real name is and gave her what he knew. That wouldn’t surprise her.

Dom’s real name was Neena. But she hated it. And Remy was called Gambit by the guards.

“Do you have family?” He asks her suddenly. She shakes her head.

“They’re all dead or in hiding. Mutants are really only ever wanted for one thing, considering we technically aren’t even supposed to exist.” 

While the numbers of Mutants were increasing every year, so were the underground organizations to keep mutants safe or in chains. After Captain America--there were quite a few that had tried to replicate the formula. The smaller number of Mutants had misconstrued it with believing they’d be free to live in the open.

The Von Strucker Twins had been dubbed Hydra experiments, but they were anything but. Their vicious pursuits had proven two things: greed transcended race and that fear was a plague.

The damage they’d created--multiple terrorist attacks as well as genocide, had lead mutants back into hiding in fear after a few public lynchings. And with the majority of mutants being children at that point Charles Xavier and a few of his colleagues had set up an international program to protect new mutants with the hopes that one day the world would be far more ready to face them.

He’d died before that day had ever come. And now she wasn’t sure it would.

He was still one of the best men she’d ever known.

“You’re a…mutant?” He asks slowly. She frowns.

“Aren’t you?” She asks.

“No.” He says curtly. 

“Are you serious?” He raises a dark brow at her. “I saw you throw a man twenty feet!”

“Science experiment.” He says tightly, and she can feel him clam up.

Dropping it, she reaches over and grabs the book.

“Did you get a lighter?” She asks him. He glares up at her.

“If I lose control, you need to use that.” Jaw clenching, she throws it at him.

“If you lose control, I’ll use my powers.”

 _“No.”_ Yasha says sharply.

“I hate to break it to you buddy but I’m a mutant not--”

“I’ve killed more men and women than you can imagine.” His voice turns hard and cold, cutting her off sharply. “Until he’s gone for good, you are keeping this. Memorize the words. And if you have too, say them.”

A cold shiver hits her and she stares owlishly at him for a moment.

“We need to move soon. Get a move on it.” 

Clenching her jaw, she grabs the pile as he stuffs the book into a bag.

“Sir, yes, sir.” She mutters under her breath as she walks by him.

If he hears her, he doesn’t say.


	2. Part Two: The River

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snacks, camping, and a dip in a river.

Caved In  
Part Two: The River

When she attended the Xavier Institute, once a month they’d go on a trip into New York and go to a museum, park, or theater. Her first trip was to Washington Square Park. It was nice to get away from the grounds. The older kids of course were given passes to come and go with permission to take the cars once they were old enough to drive cars and kept up good behavior. But she was fifteen when the institute was destroyed so she never got to do that. She relied on the day trips into the city or when she’d be asked to join Logan on a supply trip.

She didn’t have many friends at the Institute. Even her powers freaked out most of the other kids. Turns out other kids didn’t want to be around someone they thought could make them do whatever they wanted. It didn’t really matter that her powers didn’t work that way unless she was actively trying (which they’d be able to see) or that Professor Xavier would never allow it. But Piotr was the only one that willingly hung out with her. With him came his small group of friends who were at least nice to her. David and Julio were nice kids, but talkative as hell. On the trips into the city they’d ramble off and fill her ears with topics from cars to comic books to what they thought the new mutant could do.

Yasha is the complete opposite. In the first four hours, he said nothing. He just _drove_. Silent was his thing. 

And listen--Cacey isn’t exactly the most talkative person. She’s far more relaxed learning about people by watching them and it was a tool that kept her alive in that hell. But this is the first time in years she’s been free to talk to people outside of a cage

Which--back it up.

It’s been _five_ years. And now she’s twenty years old. She was taken when she was fifteen.

She’s never gone skinny dipping. She still hasn’t ever had a real boyfriend. The few dances she went on with Piotr was nothing. She always knew even though he’d kissed her twice and they held hands in the hallways it wasn’t anything real. Just…comfort. There was nothing romantic about them and it fizzled out nearly as fast as it started. She’s never had sex. She’s never drank a beer. Never snuck out--because escaping doesn’t count. She’s never driven a car. She’s never gone to fucking prom, and she doesn’t have her high school diploma. She was fourth in class for fucks-sake--all of that is gone.

Some of her most important and formative years have been stuck in a concrete cell.

And this guy? From the way he reacted, it was even worse for him.

They must have pissed off important people in a past life.

Because Cacey isn’t really sure what anyone could do in life to deserve this. She was really just a normal mutant kid up until five years ago. If there was something like that. But this guy? He said he wasn’t a mutant but if he was it’d probably have to do with supreme stealth. The first day she falls asleep and he still manages to startle her even though she knows he’s right there.

She lasts three days before she can’t keep silent anymore.

“What did you do before this?” She asks him finally after passing into Lithuania. He has papers for them when they cross, which--when? How? And when she looks at the picture of her, she grimaces.

It was a more recent picture Weapon X had taken. Her blonde hair is braided back and she isn’t smiling. Honestly, even though she does look better now with rest, she’s still strangely thin so the picture is accurate. Cacey had gone years without looking in a mirror but seeing herself in the mirror at the hotel had felt like she was looking at a stranger.

Her hair was limp and curly, but there was no volume. The color had dulled out and she was so pale she looked almost translucent. And her cheek bones were so prominent she was almost sure she might be able to cut someone. Her green eyes were dull too. And she was thin. Thin enough that he keeps handing her food that her stomach can only barely handle. But it’s been so long since she’s had real food she takes it and just eats it slow.

Her name is listed as Cassandra Kline, his has Yasha--which is apparently pretty common considering she’s heard it quite a lot as they’ve integrated in and out of cities. He wants them seen just enough to be followed--and then when they have a direction that seems obvious they’ll make a break for it.

“I only remember flashes.” He says, voice more thickly accented than before as they’ve only just passed the border. “Fighting. A…metal mill maybe.” She frowns, turning to look at him. Her eyes trace the line of his jaw, but the cut on the side of his face is gone. It had been gone days ago.

“The longer you’re out, the more you should get your memories back. Unless they had a telepath.” He nods slowly before looking at her.

“You know others that have…been like me?” She snorts rather rudely, grabbing the juice he’d given her and taking a sip.

“One of my old Professors was one of Weapon X’s first successful mutant experimentation. They’re the ones that had me before. They liked to utilize their abilities to create more ‘weapons.’ But every once in a while we meet some of the others they turned into hounds.”

“They sound like a delight.” 

She almost drops the chip she’s about to bring to her mouth.

“Was that sarcasm?” He flashes her an annoyed look.

“I’m capable of it, yes.” He bites back.

“Is there a reason the last three days have been silent? I’m bored out of my god-damned mind!” She turns and faces him, back against the door and she crosses her arms over her chest.

“Sorry sweetheart, if I’d known you required constant attention--”

His expression wavers for a moment before he curses under his breath and lights begin to flash behind them.

Two more cruisers slide up. His jaw clenches, knuckles going white on the steering wheel. She feels her stomach drop and as she looks down she sees a ring box in the cup holder. When she opens it, there’s a small price tag attached to it that makes her not feel so bad that Yasha stole the car.

On instinct she grabs it and slips it onto her ring finger before grabbing his hand and peeling it off the steering wheel.

“What are you doing?” He grinds out.

“Listen,” she mutters under her breath, “my passport was from the U.S. right?” He nods shortly. “Then I play dumb American who recently got engaged to a Russian Yasha uh what’s your--”

“Ivanov,” he supplies with an unimpressed frown.

“I use my powers to convince them to let us go on our way.”

“Your hands turn _black_ ,” he snaps.

“Not when I’m not at full power and about to be experimented on with a concussion.” She says firmly. “It’ll be fine, but seriously you need to stop clenching the steering wheel. I’ve seen what you can do with a man, lets not leave indents in the wheel, we’re _borrowing_.”

His other hand lets go and he levels a scowl at her as she pulls her sleeves down to cover her wrist and adjusts the ring on her finger. It’s a bit loose, but it’s not gonna fly off. He slips on gloves and slips his arm over her shoulder. She slides closer on the bench to lay against his side and lets warm comfort slip out from her.

When one of the cops stroll up to the front window places a calming hand on his thigh. Yasha instantly turns on the charm and leaves her nearly floored.

He talks with confidence in a language she doesn’t even know while she smiles prettily and waves nervously before angling her hand onto his lap so they can see the ring while she lets out the strongest wave of calm she can without being too obvious. 

They speak long enough that she starts to worry and shifts in her seat, angling further into Yasha and flashing another confused smile.

He and Yasha suddenly laugh and then shake hands, and Yasha is careful not to make sudden movements until after the man gets back in his car. Suddenly turning to face her, she can feel his breath on the side of her face.

“It worked doll,” he murmurs. “But we need to dump the car after this.”

The relief makes her forget that he called her doll.

They take a night in Lithuania in a small motel room. There is a single double bed like the last two they’d stayed in and the bathroom is only half portioned off. The sink is visible from the room but at least the toilet and tub aren’t.

Yasha drops the bag instantly by the bed and starts moving furniture around the room and angling it defensively between the bed and the door. Eyeing his movements, she chooses to check the bathroom.

It’s clean, though the tile is so outdated she’s pretty sure the tile is older than Yasha. The toilet seat has a flowery painted ceramic cover which was a bit strange. Theres a single framed flower picture above the toilet.

She checks the bathroom window, which has an impressive drop.

 _Good,_ she thinks. _At least no one can come in this way._

He’s still working around the room when she sighs. He’d been growing antsier since they’d been stopped by the cops. They’d changed two cars since then. And it’d only been eight hours. 

But she felt far more drained than she expected.

“I’m gonna take a shower.” He grunts, and she rolls her eyes. They still don’t know each other well enough for her to tell if this was normal.

But then she wants to roll her eyes at herself and gets so mad.

What was normal to him? He spent years inside of Hydra, used as a weapon under the worst conditions known to man. Just from looking at him she could tell he was struggling but she didn’t really know how to reach out and be there. She didn’t know how to do that for anyone anymore, let alone for a stranger who she wasn’t even sure if he wanted her help. They were stuck each other survival’s sake. They were facing the possibility of being hunted for the rest of their lives by Hydra. Not exactly best buddies.

Hesitating at his back, he continues to move around the room watching the angles of the room before laying out the guns and taking them apart on the desk. His back is so rigid she’s not even sure she could do much more than aggravate him.

Biting her inner cheek she just turns and walks into the ‘bathroom’ and strips awkwardly in the tight quarters, wrapping a brown towel around herself when she checks her shoulder in the mirror above the sink for a moment as the water warms. She can feel him start to fray, but Yasha was fighting hard to stay in control. Honestly, the headache beginning at the base of her skull was beginning to grow and her arm ached. Cacey wasn’t really sure how much longer she had until she started to crash.

The water barely reaches warm, but she remembers what Yasha had told her about the water. Instead she focuses on untangling her hair and she wishes that she could wash away the bruises and cuts. 

She really envied Yasha and his ability to heal.

Looking down at her feet she scowls. 

To be honest she wasn’t sure if the anxiety was from her or him. 

After a long enough time she knows that she’s just hiding and turns off the water, grabbing the towel over the shower curtain. She scrubs her hair dry before spending her time and begins untangling slowly before braiding it down her back. Then she wraps her body in the towel before pulling the curtain open and slipping into the shower. 

The second she steps out she sees him sitting on the bed so still her stomach drops. Instantly she starts pulling on her pants and throwing on a sweater before throwing the towel onto the floor before cautiously moving forward.

“Yasha?” 

His gaze snaps to hers and she knows its not Yasha in control.

The book is on the other side of him: he’d had it. 

Her feet move slowly across the roughly cushioned floor and he watches her. His eyes are as cold as they had been before he’d snapped out of it a few nights before. The lines of his face are harder and every line of his body is taut like a bow string, waiting to snap.

She lets out soothing warmth as the veins in her wrists and hands start to turn to inky black. 

“Can I touch you?” 

His brow narrows at her question. She wonders if anyone has ever asked since they created this shell if they could do something to him. This…shell felt hollowed out. No choices, no decisions, no path.

Just the mission. Orders.

He’s the one that reaches out for her.

He grabs her wrist, hard and she clenches her teeth, ignoring the instant fear the fills her. She waits a beat and his hand doesn’t crush her. He just accepts the soft warmth further and further forward. Slowly taking a step forward she brought her hand to rest on his clavicle, thumb resting on the open piece of skin there.

His metal arm rises and grabs her hand. This time it’s much more gentle. His heart beat is elevated but his breathing is slow and even. The metal fingers follows her gentle caressing as she begins to pull him out.And for a long moment she finally feels the tension fall. His skin is smooth but the dark hair from his chest is coarse under her fingers. 

“You were supposed to grab the book.” He croaks out, sounding dead tired.

“It was on the other side of you,” she mutters. He shakes his head but leans forward until his head rests on her stomach. She lets the tension slip from her back and slides her hand up and past his shoulder into the nape of his hair.

“You need to rest. You feel exhausted.”

He shakes his head. “Someone needs to--”

“I will stay awake for a few hours so you can rest.” She says firmly, patting down the loose hair on the back of his neck. They’re sticky with sweat.

His shoulders fall.

“Okay.”

The next day when they leave he’s just as quiet but he has eased up and lets her flicker through the radio without complaint. And when they stop in the city they hold hands when he starts to feel jumpy. Still not a talker--but he seems to be a feeler. It makes her wonder how long it’s been since someone has touched him without any desire to cause harm.

Maybe she was better off with Weapon X compared to what he went through. At least she got to talk to the others on her floor. And she shared a cell with Dom for a while, too.

He’s lost his anxious edge, but she can still feel the shell threatening to come back over. She pushes back the urge, but it’s never really gone.

He doesn’t ever ask her to stop using her powers which is something she’s never thought would happen. At the school they always discouraged her from using them so the other kids wouldn’t think she was trying to use it on them.

Although he seems obsessed with feeding her.

Anytime he stops he grabs her food--it’s actually a bit annoying. Mostly because she’s yet to dislike a thing he gives her. But it also may be because she’s got hardly any reservations anymore. Black nutritional sludge is all she ate for half a decade and she can only imagine what he’s eaten in the last few years. He always steals a bit of hers even though he always has his own.

She’s still eating dinner, a turkey sand-which when he pulls off of a dirt road and drives further out. The road loses it’s way, and they drive up he slows down, looking around while moving forward before throwing the truck into park. Leaning into the backseat, he pulls out two sleeping bags. 

“So, where’d you get all this money again?” She asks, because he’d walked easy as rain out of the restaurant with the sandwiches only two hours earlier. She’d eaten the chips and cookie first, ignoring his raised eye brow. Fake papers cost money. She just hadn’t thought if it until now. 

“Hydra.” He says evenly. Impressed, she shrugs and folds the sand-which up as he gets out of the truck. By the time she gets out, he’s already working.

He lays the sleeping bags in the bed of the truck, on top of blue tarps. But it’s her that finishes setting up the sleeping arrangements when she puts the sand-which down and climbs up into the truck. He disappears into the woods for a while while she leans back against the end of the cab in the bed of the truck watches the stars in the breaks of the trees.

Its the first time in years she’s actually been able to sit and watch the stars without immediate fear of who was chasing her. She didn’t have that stupid collar on and could feel every person that came close. It was a relief. It doesn’t make the nervous anxiety in the base of her belly go away fully--but she can enjoy the beauty of the night sky without wanting to cry from terrified exhaustion.

She can feel him nearly a half an hour later, and she watches him as he approaches the truck. 

He’s quiet, but his face is wet and hair is damp. She raises an eyebrow at him as he hauls himself up and into the bed. He smells clean--in fact he smells like freshwater.

“River only fifteen minute walk from here.” He says evenly, reaching across and grabbing the second half of her uneaten sandwich she was still nursing. She slaps his hand. He lets go of it and it falls her lap. Cacey hands him the second one he ordered for himself. A small smirk slips across his face.

“Do you think if you tried…you could make the words not work?” He asks her quietly. Pausing, she picks off a piece of bread and eats it slowly.

“That’s not really how my powers work. Everything I can control is temporary.”

He nods, reaching down and opening his ham and cheese. He just stares at it for a long moment and pulls out a pickle. Grimacing she turns away.

Okay, maybe there were some things she still didn’t like.

“You keep pushing him back.” He mutters. “I thought that maybe…” his voice trails off and she sighs, pushing her long braid over her shoulder with a frown.

“Professor X always said that when it comes to the mind the simple solution never works.” He snorts loudly.

“It felt like you were ripping apart my head the first time,” he says. “Not sure how that’s easy.”

Wincing, she looks at him.

“I’m sorry for using you like that.” She says quietly. “I know--I know they were evil but--”

“Don’t.” He says tightly. “Don’t apologize. You did what I’ve been trying to do for decades.”

 _“D-decades?”_ Her voice is a few decibels higher and she stares at him in horror. There’s no way he’s over thirty.

“I…I remember listenin’ to the radio. Hearin’ them talk about Pearl Harbor bein’ hit.” Her jaw drops and she actually feels her stomach drop into her belly. Pearl Harbor? That was 1941! “I think…I think I signed up the next day.”

He flinches in pain, hands grabbing at his face and in instinct she grabs both of his wrists. The surface of his metal arm is smooth, but there is a very distinct scar across the other wrist made of flesh and blood. “I did terrible things.”

His voice is thick with grief and she just has the urge to reach over and take it all away from him. To peel it away and give him something good to live with. Her fingers itch to tear at the thick walls of grief, self-doubt, and guilt.

“No one can fix you but you, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have help.” 

“I don’t really think I’m worth it.” 

She flinches.

Tightening her hands around his wrist she leans into his side, but turns out to face the opening of the bed of the truck.

“I almost got out once before, me and the thirty others on my cell-block. Even got to the edge of the island they kept us on. I think…it was only about a year before I finally got out, only then got picked up by Hydra.” 

In the dirty nightgowns they forced her to wear at night and bare feet she’d made her way out disabling the remote control on the collars along with the others, but they hadn’t managed to take off the dampeners. Some of the stronger kids were able to work through the pain. With no active powers like Remy and Warren, or even like Thunderbird, she had been one of the weakest in the group. Dom had tried to get her to keep up, but when she could hear the screaming of Kevin, Alison and John she’d turned back. 

“I turned back to help some of the kids, but we got recaptured. I had the chance--the chance to get them out. But I couldn’t bring myself to kill the mutants they’d turned against us to hunt us. I’d felt people die before. I was so afraid of feeling that again that I let us get recaptured. I hated myself. Sometimes…sometimes I still do.”

In the weeks following the near escape she’d sobbed herself to sleep for days while she healed from the whipping wounds. She hardly ever moved until Stryker had come back and had increased the intervals of testing. In that time it’d felt like she had been drowned in guilt and was struggling to stay above the water.

“It’s different.” He says quietly.

“Yeah, it is.” She says evenly. “But I still did it. Just like you still did it--against your will. I chose to do what I did. But I don’t think we would have come this far back if we didn’t want to survive.”

“You deserve to live,” he says sharply. “You are the reason I’m not stuck with them.. The reason I’m not still fighting.” She turns away, not liking the way his blue eyes pin her to her spot and make her feel guilty that she’s glad he’s stuck here with her so she’s not so alone. 

_So do you. You deserve to live too._

“You’re the reason I’m not dead on the floor of that lab. We can’t be guilty if we’re staying alive for each other, right? So until we figure out how to live with it, how about we live for each other.” She hands over the turkey and cheese to him.

He doesn’t say anything, but he does take the sand-which with a slow nod.

She takes that as a win.

He’s already awake by the time the sun rises and punches her awake. And to be honest, not ever has Cacey ever been a morning person.

Still, it was nice to wake up in sunlight instead of a cage with the sound of birds all around. By the time she struggles to sit up, gunshot wound still tender he’s pulling on a new shirt.

He’s got a cup and she grabs her toothbrush when he waves at her.

“I need to take a look at the shoulder.” With a groan, she flops backwards. “Really?” He asks in bewilderment.

“What is it, five?” She groans.

“Fife twenty,” he corrects. “Now start moving your ass.” Raising her head to glare, she slips out of the bedroll and pulls off the sweater she’d put on before she went to bed. And then she starts unbuttoning her shirt and his face goes a little strange.

A flash of embarrassment makes her pause.

“If you’ve got a problem with the goods, _Yasha,_ look somewhere else.” 

He stands up a little straighter and scowls. She makes sure to flash a bit more of her cream cotton bralette that he picked out before tucking the shirt under her arm, along with the strap of the bra. Then she makes grabby hands at the cup of water.

She wonders if it’s just him or maybe if his 1940s sensibilities make him such a prude. Especially considering he’s actually seen her naked.

She waits until he’s close before she brings it up, just to punish him for making her wake up and stay up.

“You know we never did talk about the fact you changed my clothes.” She states casually as she dunks her tooth brush and then starts brushing her teeth. He looks up at the sky for a moment--maybe to pray before he pulls off the tape to the wrap with unnecessary gusto. Spitting to the left of the truck she levels a cold look his way. 

“You can take a nap in the car once we get going. This looks good. Wash it when you bath in the river, and I’ll re-wrap it.” Pausing, she glares.

“And how cold is this river?”

“Fuck no.” She says firmly.

“I’m not stopping so you can bathe again.” He says from a rock, arms crossed over his chest. She can feel the smugness and it’s irritating.

“I will literally freeze my tits off! How do you still have balls? Is your dick still attached or did it crawl inside your fucking body Yasha, this is--”

“Once you dunk it gets better.” He says and she can _hear_ the cruel pleasure he seems to be taking in this.

She’s got her bare foot up to her ankle in the ice cold river water. It’s almost as bad as when they hosed them down when they acted up. The only plus to this was that at least the river was slow moving.

“What did I do to you to deserve this?”

“Other than being an all-around pain in my ass?” He asks nonchalantly. Turning around, she points a judging finger in his direction.

He’s leaning back against the rock, eyes closed with a pleased smile on his face. For a moment, she freezes.

She’s never seen him smile.

Smirk yes--mostly in self-deprecation or when he’s fucking with her by taking the favorite pieces of food. But the longer and longer they’re near each other and he fights his way to keep control she can see the man he was. And she has eyes, okay? He’s fucking gorgeous.

He doesn’t look like any boy she went to school with. Even Piotr, while he’d been six foot three at fifteen years old had skin smoother than a babies bottom and a boyish face.

Before all of this--he definitely had to have girls falling at his feet left and right.

She resents him a little bit for it.

Not as much as she wants to appreciate his pretty face.

“I don’t hear you entering the water, Cacey.” His voice carries out and she glares at him.

“Fuck you.” She mutters.

Taking a deep breath she turns away and finally strips the rest of her clothes, back facing him. Grabbing the bar soap she looks up at the sky and glares. What she wouldn’t do for a shower right about now.

She inhales deeply and closes her eyes and steps forward.

Instantly she feels like she’s _dying._

“Y-you can’t have any balls left, fuck me, Jesus _Christ_!”

“Move faster and it’ll be over.” Picking up a rock and accidentally dipping her breasts, she clenches her teeth and throws a well-aimed a rock at him.

He fucking catches it.

Blue eyes snap open and he looks at her with an expression that literally drowns in _are you dumb?_ All he sees is her back and pale as fuck ass. “Move faster and it’ll be over,” she mimics under her breath. “Once you dunk it gets better,” he groans.

“Will you hurry up?” 

Taking a deep breath she sinks.

And when she rises it still sucks.

“You liar!” She snaps, scrubbing her skin with the bar of soap. She can hear him laughing, and when she looks over her shoulder she glares at him, he’s hunched over, holding his stomach with his metal arm. “You fucking dickwad,” she hisses.

“The mouth on you--”

“I’m from Dorchester,” she snaps irritably. “And I’m a fucking lady.”

He laughs and she finds it warms her stomach just a bit. At least he’s having a good time. Even if it was at her expense. She’s glad he still has it in him to be able to laugh. She thinks it means maybe he’ll make it.

He deserves it.


	3. Chapter Three: Hunted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rooftops, red, stained glass, and claws.

Caved In  
Part Three: Hunted

“What does it feel like?” He asks her.

They’re sitting on an empty building watching as a ship leaves dock. One that is supposed to carry Cassandra Kline and Yasha Ivanov. It’s heading to America and should arrive there in twenty three days. 

They’ve left enough of a paper trail to lead Hydra to America, but they’re due to circle back tonight. They have to get out as quickly as possible without leaving a trace. There’s non-permanent hair dye in her hair and he’s tied his hair up into a pony tail. They’ve dumped anything that could trace back to them in the harbor and are wearing new clothes. 

“It’s…complicated.” She mutters quietly. “At first it affected my vision. I always got headaches, saw colors different. My pediatrician thought I had a neurological disorder but we were poor so we couldn’t afford to co-pays for a specialist. I could feel strong emotions, but touch hurt like a bitch too. Half the time I tried to wear gloves in class. And fully-sleeved clothes.”

His nose wrinkles and he nods. Now the wind on her skin was something she relished in. Most of the clothes he got her were loose enough for her to roll up her sleeves and she almost always did. Even if it was cold. She usually left her tops undone so the top of her braletts peaked out. “Now it just feels like an extension of me. Like a weight that lays on me at all times. Even with the collar on if I was being touched I could feel it. Like the ghost of a hug.” 

And she supposes that even with it on she could still use her powers. It inhibited it, sure. But it didn’t negate them fully. It just hurt like a bitch when she used them.

“Sounds oppressive.” He says quietly. She nods.

“It can be, but it took years to modify it so it was like that. The first year at the school Professor X and I spent three times a week working to filtering it out and learning enough control so that I can only see the aura colors if I call it forward. But…it feels like another limb at this point.” He clenches his metal arm and nods.

“What is he like, your professor?” 

With a sigh she looks down at her hands. The ring is still on her finger. She hadn’t really taken it off. She catches Yasha looking at it more and more in the last couple of days. But he never really says anything.

“He gave me a home when I had none. But we weren’t that close. Outside of managing my powers he taught the more advanced classes. I was closer with Logan. He could be surly.” 

Her eyes burn and she blinks it back.

“I’m sorry.” She can feel he means it. Along with the guilt.

“Logan was the one who recruited me. And Scott, but Logan was different. The others were wary. A power like mine can be dangerous. I could feel that a lot of them were afraid of what I could do. But Logan never was.”

“Why were they afraid of you?” His nose wrinkles into a frown. She lets out a wet laugh and his gaze snaps to her. There’s worry in his eyes and a little bit of shock. They could chaff a bit, personality wise. She could admittedly be a bit salty all things considered. And he was more like a staff sergeant sometimes than a partner.

“When my ma died I lost control.” She lets the bomb drop and brushes through the look that rips across his face. The look in his eyes make her want to look away but she forces herself to keep the contact. “Set an entire classroom of middle schoolers into a full-panic. And when I realized what I was doing…I turned it inward. I ended up overloading my own brain and sent myself into seizures. I almost caused permanent brain damage.”

He’s silent for a long moment before he reaches over and takes her hand.

“Did…did you feel different?” 

She ignores the obvious comment of are you joking? And nods. 

“Kids like me at the institute, the ones with powers that could influence people were feared. I didn’t use my powers much except to learn how to filter through and block off. Even around Piotr.”

“Who’s Piotr?” He asks brows narrowing for a moment. 

“He was the only kid that was ever really nice to me. When I got to the school he was nearing six feet at twelve, spoke broken English, and was quiet. The kids could be cruel. But he was always kind. He used to draw little cartoons for me.”

She feels a stab of something so fleeting she can’t catch it.

“Boyfriend, huh?” She snorts rudely.

“We kissed a few times. But when you’re an empath you can tell if it’s real or just…teenage desire. Or if you’re just a replacement for someone else.” She remembers the rushed way their kisses had been. The awkwardness that had outweighed the sweetness. “Honestly I was just grateful to have someone to talk to my own age for a change. But you can thank him for my shitty Russian.”

“He sounds like an ass.” Nose wrinkling she turned and looked at him.

“Did you not just hear me say he was like the only one who didn’t run screaming?”

He shakes his head and leans back against the wall they’re sitting against. “What guy kisses one dame while thinkin of another?” He asks her with a frown. “You deserve better than that.”

Her lips twitch into a smile.

“We were fifteen Yasha. Fifteen with powers that set us apart from the others.” His expression turns curious.

“What could he do?” He asks.

She starts to laugh suddenly before knocking her knuckles over his metal arm. He looks at her warily. “He could turn into metal. Like his entire body. Matched with that, being six…three at fifteen? And with a heavy Russian accent, most people were terrified of him. But really, he was sweet. And very smart.”

His mouth twitches but he shakes his head.

“There was never anyone else?” He asks with a frown. She shakes her head.

“Nope.” She says with a sigh. But then she hesitates. “Well--I did admire one of the others I was locked up with. But that was mostly because he was always pissing off the guards. He used to trick the guards into betting on cards with him. Used to earn us bags of lifesavers. Really the only things they’d be willing to trade. Mint sucked but sometimes they had the berry ones.”

“Really?” His voice darkens for a moment. “And how much older was he than you?” When she looks at him she can see awareness in his eyes. She rolls her eyes.

“He wasn’t that much older than me.” Dark brow raising her shakes his head. “It was superficial. Lying to myself about matters of the heart rarely works out.” He snorts and faces the ship sailing off. “I was fifteen when I was taken, a freak to boot. I didn’t exactly have that many--”

“Don’t call yourself a freak,” he grunts. She smirks.

“Maybe I like being a freak,” she bluffs. “We have our own little club.”

He reaches out with his hand made of flesh and flips her hand over so her palm faces up. “If you could be human would you be?” With a quirk to her lips she lets her veins turn black. He doesn’t move his hand. He never does. She really can’t remember a moment he’s turned away from her touch.

“Still young enough to remember being human. It wasn’t that great anyways. Now at least there’s a reason to feel like an outsider more times than not. ” Eyes flickering to the side she smirks when he looks to argue. “You remember anyone?”

Sometimes he does remember things.

Like the Brooklyn in the summer.

It would get so hot the asphalt would smoke. We’d lay on the wood floors with wet towels on our faces and necks.

“Red hair,” he says slowly. “Green eyes.” Smiling, she leans her head back against the concrete.

“Remy’s eyes were red.” He jerks back and looks at her strangely. “Mutant, remember?”

“A bird like you clobbered a guy with red peepers?” He leans his head forward and shakes his head.

For a moment she’s stunned to silence. Just a moment though.

“The fuck does that even mean?” Laughter bubbles from her throat and he looks at her with an exasperated expression. He just shakes his head and reaches over to grab her hand again.

“Tell me about him.” He asks. His voice is gravelled and quiet. 

She shrugs, legs laying flat. “He was suave, I guess. Flirted a lot. Caused quite a few fights with the guards. He kept the guards off the younger ones. Incapable of keeping his mouth shut though.”

Two years before he’d escaped he’d nearly been beaten to death by a few of the Guards. Not before he’d killed two guards with his abilities.

He’d turned their batons into bombs, taking the pain in stride compared to how others took it. They had left him on the floor of the walkway in full sight for them all to see. It wasn’t until one of the docs had realized what had happened they’d moved him. Cacey still remembers watching him slowly bleed out. Even Dom had been hysterical. And Alison…

“Sounds like a Punk.” He sounds sad though.

“My ass is numb.” Pulling herself up she turns and looks at him. “Lets get the fuck out of here. And I want to sleep in a real bed tonight, Yasha.”

He huffs out a breath and hauls himself to towering height above her.

“Yes ma’am.”

They stop into a small Italian diner in Paris--which, ironic all things considered. But he’d stopped dead in his tracks closed his eyes and breathed in. She could feel the clawing of genuine warmth fill his skull. 

There’s a sliver of a smile on his face in the middle of the night in the French town. His eyes are lit with a warmth she hasn’t seen yet and then she’s pulling him in the direction of the restaurant. His hand stays interlaced with hers the entire time as she leads him up to a little restaurant front. The windows are stained glass and the last time she saw something so beautiful was when they visited St. Patricks Cathedral. The stained glass is green, and it reminds her of Jean’s office.

It reminds her of Jean.

Green had always been her aura, and her office had always been filled with drawings from the younger students. Other than Ororo, Jeans classroom had been her favorite on sight alone. Bright, warm colors. She celebrated all and any work by her students. Book reports and posters were patched on all parts of the wall. 

Green reminded her of Jean. But it also reminded her of how she died.

Pushing pack the pain, he stops her at the front before moving around her and opening the door for her. Rolling her eyes she walks in.

The restaurant has little square tile in varying colors with a centerpiece tile of a yellow floral pattern set on royal blue. The walls were a soft cream color and the wood trim was stained almost ebony. The little Italian man with a white moustache sits them down in a little booth with a vase of yellow roses and babies breath. 

Yasha had watched in awe at all of the bustling of the restaurant as she inhaled the fresh scent of the roses. Yellow was a happy color--not a single welt on the rose. They bring fresh garlic bread and the smell makes her toes curl. Yasha grabs his bread and pulls it into pieces, but still manages to sneak a slice off her plate when she buries her nose into the flowers again.

Simple pleasures she thinks.

She doesn’t even slap at his hand when he does it. Just sneaks a piece of the broken up pieces he’s done straight to her mouth. He orders for them when she realizes the menu is in French and Italian and looks at him in horror. The humor in his eyes is enough to placate how much of lumbering American tourist she feels like. And even his Italian is perfect. 

The waiter brings them more bread and he again lets her grab at it first. “I remember a place like this,” he says quietly. “In a little brownstone restaurant. You could smell the bread three blocks over. They’d let you sweep floors and wash windows for a loaf of bread. If you helped the old lady pick her tomatoes she’d even give you some.” 

She itches to ask questions but she knows when his jaw starts to clench he’s struggling to hold onto the memory and pull more out. And the more he prods the more frustrated he gets. So when she notices his jaw start to tighten she snatches a piece of bread off of his plate.

“Ma couldn’t cook for shit,” she says. “I did most of the cooking since she worked anyways. Which meant chicken nuggets, bagels, boxed pasta, and minute rice.” He frowns at her in confusion. The last few days she had been informing him of the improvements they’d made since the 1940s when he’d mention things. Music had been one of the first for him to bring up. Not that European music played American music. But at least the closer they got to Paris there were a few stations they could get in that would at least play a few songs. Not that she recognized half of it anymore. But still, explaining to him that no one really used records anymore and really just used the internet, Ipods, radio, or CDs had been pretty funny. “I did take a few home-EC classes though, not to brag, but I made some pretty awesome waffles.”

He smiles crookedly, but his eyes look far off. “Mrs. Mancini used to give us a slice of pie--” his nose wrinkles and he laughs. “Most of the kids pretended they hated Italian food but Steve and I used to share that slice on the walk home from school everyday. ” He grabs the napkin on the place holder where his fork and knife were. He adjusted the style and for a moment she watches a little entranced how sure his hands move before he lays the linen flat. And then she realizes--

Who the hell is Steve?

The Waiter brings three plates of food and before she can ask him a question Yasha arranges the three plates in front of them, moving the cup of flowers next to her right arm. Her eyes flicker around the arrangement before he grabs his fork and gives her a half smile.

“You’ve gotta try all of this, doll.”

Their luck runs out less than a week later.

But it isn’t Hydra that catches up.

They’re on a back-road in Croatia when the tingle grabs her lower spine. Yasha flashes her a look quickly and she leans forward, palms spread out on the dash. Eyes close, and she reaches out. 

Bile rises. 

It’s him.

“Y-Yasha--”

“How many are there?” His voice is different, cold. She doesn’t fight back the asset.

“One.” Her voice shakes and she unbuckles the belt across her chest.

“Debrief me.”

She shakes her head to ward off the urge to curl into herself. “His name is Victor Creed, code name Sabretooth. Top Mutant Hunter for Weapon X, and he is a Mutant.”

She can feel the flicker of Yasha to the surface. “Is he mind-controlled?” She shakes her head with a bitter smile.

Turning to look at him, his jaw is clenched and she’s almost sure the wheel is going to burst under his hand. Steel blue eyes are lit aflame with rage. “He just likes the hunt.” She can feel him getting closer and the untamable bloodlust and rage. “Enhanced if not superhuman speed, strength, senses, and he can heal at least three times faster than you. He’s taken bullets to the head and gotten up. He’s like an animal. Hunts like one. Fights like one. He--he never loses Yasha.”

“Neither does the Winter Soldier.”

Eyes darting forward she can feel him, and he’s caught up with them.

“He’s the best hunter they have, all the others--even the volunteers were afraid of him. He’s close--I don’t--”

The car jerks to the left as something hits it.

Yasha’s arm reaches out on instinct and she crashes into him instead of the dashboard and the windshield. 

In the movies they say its like time slows down. For her it doesn’t. It just feels like everything else around her is moving super fast and her head is struggling to process it. As the truck spins and moves, she knocks her head against the window.

Her vision goes white for a moment, and when her ears stop ringing she looks over to the side but Yasha isn’t there. With a frown, the door next to her is ripped off. Flinching she looks at it owlishly with a confused frown.Yasha has the entire door in his hands.

“I…didn’t know you could do that.” 

She doesn’t get a reaction, he just pulls her out of the car and holds her against the side of the car with one hand on her stomach to steady her while fishing out the three bags they were travelling with. He manhandles one on her, the one with the book and the money and then hands her the duffel back.

Looking over his shoulder, she sees Sabretooth.

The man is just as terrifying to her as he was when he captured her the first time. Only this time, Yasha is about the same size. Bulky and wide around the shoulders, tightly compacted muscles and considering his biceps rival the size of tree trunks. 

She can feel the smug satisfaction. “This…is gonna be fun.”

Lips trembling, rage taking hold of her belly she lifts her hand and her hand turns black. She thinks of how he dragged her by her hair kicking and screaming with that collar on and put her in the cell. She thinks about the glee he’d taken in watching them be tortured for every experimentation, taunting from the viewing rooms.

And she squeezes.

His weathered face twists in pain and he lets out a roar, head tilting back.

Blue eyes look down at her and she lets out a pained breath. Her ribs fucking hurt, her face is on fire, and she’s so angry.

He pulls his cap off and puts it on her head. His hand slips behind her head to cradle her forward and she is startled out of her concentration. His eyes are a reflection of blue that only Yasha has--not in color but in warmth. The anger fades for a moment, her own eyes widening. Metal hand brushes her hipbone softly before pulling away from her.“Stay out of the way, Cacey.” Yasha turns his body to face an advancing Creed.

Her belly tightens in something she doesn’t really comprehend under the pain and terror of what’s going on. And then she realized what he just said. Eye brows raising in indignation, he doesn’t look as he drops the third bag by her feet. “Stay out of the way Cacey?” She repeats, shrilly. “He has claws. Watch out for those while I stay out of the way.” Did he forget she didn’t sit and hide the last time they were in a fight for their lives?

Victor laughs like the fucking psychopath and swipes the air above Yasha.

The punch Yasha lands on Victor crushes something and she can feel her ribs explode in even more pain. But what worries her is the switch change in Victor.

“Oh, you’ve found yourself a boyfriend that can fight, eh? Maybe this will be worth my time.” 

Yasha doesn’t respond.

He just fights.

Which--she’s not sure if fighting is an apt description.

Yasha strikes forward relentlessly and mercilessly. Left, right--each movement he makes drives him forward. Her breath leaves her when Victor finally plants his feet and moves forward.

Yasha is fast, but Victor is an animal.

Swinging forward, the momentum of the fight clashes. Victor is all teeth and claw as he lunges and lunges forward. She knows that Yasha is doing his best to keep the fight away from her but the anxiety building in her stomach is becoming unbearable.

A hard kick leaves Yasha weakened, using his metal arm to take the bulk of Victors swings until Victor realizes how weakened Yasha is.

Victor Creed had the same healing factor Logan did.

Yasha is still a supersoldier.

His next strike is so fast she only sees a blur. The crack is followed by a pained roar she can feel reverberate in her chest. The pain is followed by a vicious streak of blind rage.

Yasha blocks the lunge for the throat but claws still drag and shred through his arm. 

She feels it up her arm: the shredding of skin and tissue beneath. Her vision fades.

All she can breath is fear and she’s choking on it.

Reaching out again she just lets go.

And it feels like a weight is lifted.

His arm is on her bare legs while he sleeps on the bed and she works on cleaning out the gaping wounds. At either end they’ve already begun to heal but she is actually beginning to wonder if they’re going to scar. His face is bruised and the ice bucket next to him on the bed is full of bloody rags.

Victor Creed was left on the street, a shivering mess of tears, terror, and pain when they’d left. 

But Yasha had looked at her with fear. He’d been afraid of what she was capable of. Just like everyone else.

And at least he hadn’t pulled away from her. Maybe he was afraid of what she was capable of but not her. The fact she’d leveled a man he was struggling to fight to mush. She wasn’t even sure he had noticed that he had been bleeding as much as he was when he’d rushed up at her. He’d held her face in both of her hands and called her name over and over again. The asset had fallen to the wayside in fear of what she’d done. She hadn’t just landed Victor Creed a useless vegetable in the middle of a dirt road in Croatia. 

She healed her head wound, her broken ribs, and all the scrapes and bruises all over herself. She doesn’t know how. She doesn’t understand how. It’s not her ability. The scar on her shoulder was still there. But every would she got in that car accident was gone. The scar on her neck was still there. 

The scars on her ankle from breaking it at nine was still there.

It didn’t matter to her that much except for the guilt and frustration that had leveled her. She wanted to give it to Yasha. She didn’t want him here passed out on her legs while she wondered if they were going to be found again. She didn’t want him to fight anyone else. Not for her and not for himself. 

The night on the rooftop and in the restaurant--that's what she wants.

She doesn’t want to fight anymore. It’s too lonely. 

Not when any moment they could both end up back where they came from. She doesn’t want that.

She grabs the medical wrap and wraps his arm slowly, pressing the wounds closed at each part. He hardly even moves as she works on his arm. He’d cleaned off her face and forced her under the spray of the shower even when she refused to take a shower until she took a look at all of his wounds. He won the argument out of pure stubbornness and she’d taken the fastest shower known to man. But he slipped in just after her. 

Then they sat on the bed while she cataloged every injury he had and he probed gently at her bare ribs and forehead. He avoided the edge of the bralette and her lower stomach and she avoided touching the part of his arm so heavily scarred around his prosthetic. 

He wouldn’t stop touching her.

And she doesn’t really know what the line is or where it is anymore.

Because when she falls asleep that night she stays above the covers, pressed against his side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate writing fight scenes. They are without a doubt, the worst. I’ve been working on this (and by working I mean glaring at the computer screen because I’m exhausted from work) and I need to just post it.
> 
> Also, I keep writing Bucky and keep having to erase it to write Yasha. Can’t wait until I don’t have to do that.

**Author's Note:**

> Отвянь=Fuck off  
> Чем вы занимаетесь=What are you doing  
> Это девушка= It is the girl  
> Вы говорите по-англиский= Do you speak English  
> Книга= the book  
> Да= Yes  
> Для актива= for the asset  
> Вы спасли нас обоих= you saved us both.


End file.
